I am an evil giraffe. But I'm trying, Nick. I'm trying REAL HARD to be the wizard.

Peggy Noonan, in the process of comparing Pope Saint John Paul II to Barack Obama, definitely to the detriment of the latter:

Pollsters always say a politician has to project optimism. I think what they have to project is belief, and when people see it they appreciate it and become more optimistic.

Many people (including myself) do in fact have a bit with trouble with the way Peggy looks at things sometimes, but I think that she’s right, here. And I do not think Barack Obama really believes in anything. Which is depressing: I’d like to believe that somebody as good as Obama is at being a rotten President would at least have an evil plan*. I also wish that he hadn’t picked an absolute buffoon as Vice President; we might have convinced Obama to resign by now if only the alternative wasn’t so soul-cringingly awful. (more…)

This is the reason many people don’t like ObamaCare. It’s also part of why people wind up making fun of the president at state fairs. (On that, everyone should breathe deep and remember, as the noted political philosopher Orson Welles once put it: “It’s the business of the American people to take the mickey out of the president.” It’s not only what we do, it’s what we should do. Welles was speaking on a talk show; it was the 1970s; he was talking about people making fun of some Republican president, Nixon or Ford. So what? They can take it. And they’re not kings. Let me suggest a classy Obama move that might go over well. From his Vineyard vacation spot he should have the press office issue a release saying his reaction to finding out a rodeo clown was rudely spoofing him, was, “So what?”

Coverage of the opening of [George W. Bush’s] presidential library Thursday was wall to wall on cable, and a feeling of affection for him was encouraged, or at least enabled, by the Washington press corps, which doesn’t much like Mr. Obama because he’s not all that likable, and remembers Mr. Bush with a kind of reluctant fondness because he was.

Mr. Romney is not the leader of the party; he left no footprints in the sand. There is no such thing as Romneyism, no movement of which he’s the standard-bearer. Nor is he a Washington figure with followers. Party leaders already view him as a kind of accident, the best of a bad 2012 lot, a hiccup. The bottom-line attitude of Republican political pros: Look, this is a man who’s lived a good life and would have been a heck of a lot better than Obama, and I backed him. But to be a successful Republican president now requires a kind of political genius, and he didn’t have it and wasn’t going to develop it. His flaws as a candidate would have been his flaws as president. We dodged a bullet.

I was sympathetic to Peggy going into this more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger evisceration by Victoria Coates over the former’s reaction to Donald Rumsfeld’s Known and Unknown – my major problem with Noonan’s stuff was that the shtick of “Let us lose ourselves in memories of those wonderful, lost days of Reaganus Augustus as the barbarians pour over the wall” – but not particularly sympathetic after reading it. There is something sad and embarrassing about seeing Noonan be upset that her historical narrative – and Bob Woodward’s, which is not actually a threat to Noonan’s – does not measure up to Donald Rumsfeld’s thoroughly documented and referenced account of the same time period. Sad, embarrassing, and more than a little unpleasant.

That’s the title of a Peggy Noonan piece, and Joy McCann (Little Miss Attila) has some comments about the stars – or scales – falling from Peggy’s eyes:

…she,Ann Althouse, and Megan McArdle will have to deal with it for the rest of their lives. Those three women have all been an intellectual blessing to public discourse in this country, but they all succombed to the same cult of personality two years ago, and we still do not know what the final price tag on that cult of personality is going to be.

Well, Megan’s off of my Elections Have Consequences list… but, yeah, Joy’s right: the people who bought into the President’s cult of personality are going to have to deal with that eventually.

Assuming that the President even runs for re-election. I know, I know, that sounds silly: after all, the Democrats still think that they can pull out the votes on health care rationing. But the job situation sucks, frankly; and it’s not going to stop sucking any time soon; and jobs creation is not even the next thing on the legislative horizon. And I don’t think that the man even likes being President. And not in that good way, either.

A moment last Monday, just after noon, in Manhattan. It’s slightly overcast, not cold, a good day for walking. I’m in the 90s on Fifth heading south, enjoying the broad avenue, the trees, the wide cobblestone walkway that rings Central Park. Suddenly I realize: Something’s odd here. Something’s strange. It’s quiet. I can hear each car go by. The traffic’s not an indistinct roar. The sidewalks aren’t full, as they normally are. It’s like a holiday, but it’s not, it’s the middle of a business day in February. I thought back to two weeks before when a friend and I zoomed down Park Avenue at evening rush hour in what should have been bumper-to-bumper traffic.

This is New York five months into hard times.

She then goes on to list all the shops that are going away, compares Sullenberger to that woman with the octuplets, how we’re all lost and need to get back on track, yadda yadda. Actually, that last bit’s kind of true: we should get back on track. So, just because I’m a nice guy, I’d thought that I’d provide her with a little list: (more…)